275. WISH I HAD
Tommy and Lenora Vicks were two people
I'd gotten to know from down along e12th Street -
he was a stage-construction union guy for some
of the big uptown theaters and she passed her time
waitressing and trying to put together some sort of
dance career - which never went anywhere that I
saw. The two of them were pretty normal in all other
respects, and by the time I met them it was surprising
to me to be able to find two NYC people, in a close age
range proximity to me, who actually did live fairly
normal lives from their own nice apartment; flowers
and window-sill planters and a decent little garden
spot out back, and nicely furnished rooms and kitchen
and all the other amenities I'd normally have thought
about for some older uncle or aunt somewhere. They
did all this pretty well and I guess really the only thing
they'd not acquired was a car - urban New Yorkers
took that in stride and never thought twice about it,
even though it did stand out a bit to me, and even
though I too, of course, didn't have one. At the
same time though I wasn't 'seeing them' as an uncle
or an aunt living comfortably in a nice space. So, I
just let it go. However, Lenora's paradise was 14th
Street and all the stuff it offered, so that I suppose
from that spot most of these things in this homey little
space came. Back in those days it was still the sort
of environment where 14th Street yet held some
dignity - fairly decent dress and gown and linen
shops and dishes and stuff - whereas now it too
has degenerated into the usual Chinese junk and
imported trinkets sold by immigrants along the
way - acres of cheap paper products and
detergents indoors and ten dollar shoes and
watches outdoors. At this time - not so much
now - there'd be carts and rows of cheap people
selling cheap stuff, but even though it was
cheap, that was mostly because of no overhead.
It wasn't because the stuff itself was cheap.
I don't know how the stores even tolerated this
- all those street merchants undercutting store
prices for certain goods by large margins
- because they had no overhead, no light-bills,
no wages and taxes - no what's now called 'brick
and mortar' concerns to worry about. The stores,
on the other hand, were drowning in expenses. I
always figured that if I was a store owner I'd most
certainly send some goons out there, to the sidewalk,
to bash some heads and convince these morons to
move on. On top of all else, they didn't even pay
rent for their little sidewalk space, while the store
owners got saddled with everything.
-
But, to my point, the rows and rows of carts and booths
which now distract the eye and ear (and nose) with
all that cheap, plastic, and marginal stuff, were not there.
Another funny thing about that older New York is the fact
of the now 'glorified' charm of the old pushcart vendors
who sold along every street their wares, and fruits, and
vegetables and most anything else in the early days before
the establishment of sales taxes, department stores, and
inspectors and compartments and sections for selling this
and that under roof and ceiling - now that same, unique
'once-so-charming' outdoor sales effect has degenerated
into trash-merchants redundant up and down some streets
and certainly any historic 'charm' has long ago been cancelled
out. But Lenora partook of all this stuff and from it made a
nice place and Tommy - always busy - just came and went
as he needed and it was a pleasure to visit them - 28 w12th
if I recall - the few times I did, but before that Tommy Vicks
had gotten into some sort of scrap with the law and had a few
'precarious' months, as he put it, in jail or Rikers or somewhere
sweating it out. But he was always the same - direct and
strong-willed, with a foul-enough mouth used mostly on the
job - but it was all something, he'd say you get used to real
fast if you're 'gonna' survive here,' and because of his skills
he'd built a few really nice shelf-cases and tables in the
apartment which added a nice touch. But there really
never were any books about - something I always looked
for - they'd load this space all up instead with decorative
stuff, I guess called 'furnishings' or something, things that
she'd get out shopping along the streets. It was nice
visually (so was she, but I never got involved in any of
that angle; just so you know), but never meant too
much to me to see and I did alwaysrue the lack of
books there, as I said. That might not seem like much
of anything but I mention it twice because, for me, the
way I was, it was a touchstone signature of how people
really lived. Just as a person's actual 'signature' sort of
betrays their essential self no matter what, so also does
the presence or lack of, books, to me. I admit, it's some
50 years later now, which is weird, but the prevalence and
significance of 'books', even though prevailing society has
now discounted that factor and found a hundred others
ways for people to submit to information, and the getting
of it - as well as games, crap, junk, porno, bargains, deals
and steals, even obituaries! - I still factor in and
value the essential idea of a 'book' when I draw the
bounds for a person's interior-identity sketch. I often
wondered where theirs were - Tommy and Lenora.
Bookless?
-
One day he came home with a small
sculpture, as I remember, from some
production or other - a form made of
sticks and wire - some sort of human
pose supposed to be evocative of something,
and he plunked it in the corner on a small
pedestal he'd brought - it stayed there a
while but one time I went in it was gone so I
never knew what happened : I was never
much a theater guy but they always had those
little Playbill books strewn about too, for any of
the current productions, and they were sometimes
fun to see - especially the ads - and Tommy
would say he needed them for work and from
them he referenced names and titles and locations
where he could at any time be sent on a job - made
sense to me - and then I learned later also that
'opening night' Playbills or, better, opening night
Playbills signed by a cast member or two, were very
collectible and considered sometimes quite valuable
- the 'opening night' specials were often sealed and
stamped in a corner especially to denote their provenance
or uniqueness or whatever - anyway, I learned later that
the root of Tommy's problem had been in forging signatures
and falsely sealing and stamping playbills which he and
another person had amassed, and they'd been selling
them as original 'opening nighters' through some form
of mail-order or something for the theater crowd - they'd
gotten caught and had been charged with forgery and
theft-of-services, mail fraud, and a few other things, and
for a while it had looked bad, (serious enough charges),
but after a month or so in jail and after a few hearings,
they'd been able to buy a good enough lawyer to calm
everything down - Tommy's biggest fear was in losing
his job and his union card and all that - so that nothing
much came of it all after a while - funny and a totally
unique story to me at the time.
-
This little bit of malfeasance on Tommy's
part has always stayed with me. Not for what
he did, but - actually - for the way he, I guess,
'lied' to me, or found that he could or would, about
this. I didn't know much of any of this theater stuff,
and he could most probably have said anything he
wanted, but by mis-representing it all to say he
'needed them to stay on top of job possibilities,'
or job openings, or however he phrased it, in
retrospect to me it turned out to be pretty rotten.
And I was sorely disappointed he'd done that. I
was 'vexed' as my British friend Morris used to
say. All he had to do was own up to it. I really
wouldn't have cared. But, anyway now so long
past, it little matters. Sorry to say, I've never had
any further trace of them. Wish I had.
